DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 301, 4 May 2009

Welcome to this year's 18th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Last week we took a look at how two distributions based on the same environment and one a derivative of the other, can actually be very different. Xubuntu and Debian both use the same package management system and both have the same suites of software available. So what makes them so different when installed out of the box? Can Xubuntu be just as lightweight as its Debian counterpart? This week we take another look at how Xubuntu 9.04 fairs when installed in a more minimalist manner. In the news this past week, Mandriva developers make massive updates to "Cooker" following the stable 2009.1 release, four main BSD projects all announce new updates of their flagship products, the openSUSE community releases updated media for 11.1 with KDE 4.2.2, users of the Arch Linux distribution put together a free community magazine, the creator of Puppy Linux looks set for a return to the helm of the project, and Oracle's Solaris (no, the name doesn't roll off the tongue easily here either) is rumoured to be working on version 11 set for release in the middle of 2010. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the April 2009 DistroWatch.com donation is Python, the popular programming language. Happy reading!

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Feature Story

Minimal Xubuntu 9.04

Last week we took a look at how two distributions can be so very different even though they are based on the same technology (and even the same distribution). What we found was that the Ubuntu variant, Xubuntu, which comes with the Xfce desktop, used more than twice the amount of memory over Debian's implementation of the same desktop. The major difference came at the time of loading the desktop, where Xubuntu used almost ten times as much memory. Yes, almost 10 times (well, actually around 9.314705882 times). So why? Where does all this extra usage come from? Essentially it is due to Xubuntu's use of numerous services from the Ubuntu desktop environment, such as their graphical package manager and updater, network manager, power manager, proprietary driver manager and more, all of which use more memory. Debian on the other, chooses to use the software which comes with Xfce by default.

So, does that mean all is lost? Not at all! The comparison was between two end products - Xubuntu 9.04 and Debian 5.0.1 Xfce. As you can see not all products are created equal, but there's no reason as to why we cannot perform a more customised Xubuntu install. This would allow us to pick and choose the packages we want, therefore making it more lightweight. DistroWatch has previously published a few other similar HOWTOs, one for minimalist Ubuntu 8.10 and another for minimalist openSUSE 11.1. If your computer is a desktop machine which sits on a local network, why does your system need a resource-hungry service like NetworkManager? If you don't have any hardware in your machine which needs proprietary drivers, then why have jockey installed? As you will see, Xubuntu can be just as lightweight as Debian!

To do this, it's best to start from a small base and work your way you up. If you'd prefer to install the full Xubuntu and then reduce it, you can do that too! The main down side is that you need to know what the major packages are in order to remove them and their dependencies. Some packages will share the same dependencies, so removing one package will not remove the dependencies of the other, which is of little benefit. It will not be as lean as starting from a small base and working your way up, but it does have the benefit of not needing to perform the more tricky ncurses based install. Remember that if you start with a basic system, you can always get the full desktop by installing the xubuntu-desktop meta package. In fact, this is a great way to work out what packages included in the full Xubuntu desktop are missing from your minimal install. Running this command will show what packages Xubuntu wants to pull in, which you can then take note of and install the ones you want manually.

Get yourself an Alternate Install CD of any Ubuntu 9.04 flavour and boot to it. At the boot prompt, press the F4 key to bring up the install mode submenu. Using your keyboard, select Install a command-line system. Once the system has booted to the text based installer you are ready to begin. Select your language, location and then configure your keyboard. If you are using DHCP to automatically assign network addresses then you should receive an address, else you will need to configure your network manually. Enter a hostname and configure the clock. Partitioning your hard drive should be the same as other installs, just take extra care if you're not using a blank new hard drive. Create a new user, enabling an encrypted private directory if you wish. Set the clock and reboot the computer. You should now have a minimal Xubuntu install which we are going to tweak further.

This basic system was just a terminal login and needed a minimal Xfce environment for comparison to the others. To achieve this, I needed the following packages; X.Org, the GNOME Desktop Manager and Xfce itself. These were easily installed with the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install xorg gdm xfce4 xfce4-goodies

After the installation was complete, rebooting the system booted to Ubuntu's GNOME Desktop Manager which allowed a log in to Xfce. Naturally at this point the system is very bare, but it represents the most basic Xfce system available. This is the system that is compared in the tables below as Xubuntu 9.04 (Minimal). The other test that I did was to install all the same packages that Debian Xfce installs to get their desktop, but under Xubuntu. These results are also in the table below as Xubuntu 9.04 (Debian package list).

So how does this base install compare? Last week we saw that the major difference comes when Xubuntu loads the Xfce desktop. You can see this has been substantially reduced and is much more close to the times under Debian.

Time Taken

Distribution

Single Mode

GDM

Desktop

Firefox

Total

Xubuntu 9.04

18.60 sec

11.45 sec

25.48 sec

12.09 sec

67.62 sec

Debian 5.0.1

17.82 sec

14.62 sec

10.46 sec

5.41 sec

48.31 sec

Xubuntu 9.04 (Minimal)

16.39 Sec

15.27 Sec

11.12 Sec

6.56 Sec

49.34 Sec

Xubuntu 9.04 (Debian package list)

18.33 Sec

20.44 Sec

11.21 Sec

6.69 Sec

56.63 Sec

Memory Usage

Distribution

Single Mode

GDM

Desktop

Firefox

Total

Xubuntu 9.04

13.03 MB

39.41 MB

63.34 MB

24.82 MB

140.60 MB

Debian 5.0.1

11.58 MB

26.96 MB

6.8 MB

19.61 MB

64.95 MB

Xubuntu 9.04 (Minimal)

12.20 MB

25.06 MB

13.65 MB

20.90 MB

71.81 MB

Xubuntu 9.04 (Debian package list)

13.02 MB

24.56 MB

16.14 MB

22.00 MB

75.72 MB

So, the basic Xubuntu install with X.Org, GDM and Xfce is very similar to the default Debian Xfce system. From there, one can begin to expand the environment to make it prettier and to add functionality as required. As mentioned, I also tested Xubuntu by installing the same packages as Debian. When this happened, Xubuntu starts to once again increase its memory usage. Debian's default Xfce system installs 627 packages, while a command-line Xubuntu system with that same package list installed has 807 packages. This suggests that the binaries under Xubuntu are built against a greater number of libraries, which therefore pull in more dependencies. The benefit is broader compatibility and functionality, at the cost of efficiency.

The complete Xubuntu desktop does look stunning, so to get that look from a minimal install one simply needs to install the xubuntu-default-settings meta package. This will then pull in all the artwork and packages required and configure the system, giving that lovely looking desktop. Keep in mind that while extras are pulled in from Xubuntu, they will start to increase the amount of memory used. The base install is pretty nice and light, but what happens when I start adding some of the packages included in the default Xubuntu install? Some of the services that Xubuntu includes out of the box which contribute to its extra memory usage are: the artwork including Usplash, NetworkManager, the GNOME application installer and system updater, the proprietary driver manager, Jockey, and the power manager from GNOME. I installed each of these in order, to see how much extra memory was consumed at each step.

The package xubuntu-default-settings, which pulls in usplash and artwork, etc, increased memory usage by around 15MB.

The package update-notifier, which pulls in launchpad-integration, snaptic, update-manager, etc, increased memory usage by around 8MB.

The package gnome-app-install, which pulls in GNOME icons, python-launchpad-integration, etc, increased memory usage by around 9MB

The package jockey-gtk, which pulls in nvidia-common, scripts, python-inotify, etc, increased memory usage by around 11MB.

These numbers are very approximate, but you can see that the more you introduce, the more resources you need. Keep it simple by adding what you need, or removing what you don't.

Conclusion

Xubuntu is a great distribution, but its default selection of packages does not necessarily suit itself to low-memory systems. By performing a command-line install and building from there, users can achieve a much more lightweight system while still taking advantage of all that Xubuntu has to offer. This method provides an install that is much closer to the Debian system we compared Xubuntu with last week. Out of the box, these two systems are very different, but break them down to the core and they are much more evenly matched. One of the great things about Linux is that you're not stuck with what someone tells you to use. You have choice and you have the freedom to make your system whatever you want it to be!

The biggest news of the week was, of course, the release of Mandriva Linux 2009.1. While the event did not attract nearly as much interest as the release of Ubuntu 9.04 a week earlier, there is no doubt that the once most popular desktop Linux distribution still has many loyal followers. One of the interesting features in the commercial "Powerpack" edition (available from Mandriva Store for €49) is the "Click and Backup" feature which makes it very easy to upload up to 20 GB of data to a remote server, hosted by RackSpace. Mandriva developer Fabrice Facorat blogs about this feature (in French), while also mentioning a few interesting changes in the orientation of Mandriva. These include more emphasis on portable computers, such as netbooks and mobile Internet devices with "instant-on" capabilities, a possible entry into the free BIOS market, and a MIPS edition of Mandriva Linux for the Gdium project. However, the same developer also wonders why there is so little official communication from Mandriva about the new release and the company's future plans. Finally, to conclude the series of Mandriva-related information, here is one more from Frederik Himpe: Mandriva's development branch, better known as "Cooker", has been updated and it now includes a pre-release build of KDE 4.3 and many other package updates.

It doesn't happen often that all four principal BSD operating systems release new versions at the same time, but such was the constellation of stars last week that that's exactly what happened. New stable releases of FreeBSD 7.2, OpenBSD 4.5, NetBSD 5.0 and DragonFly BSD 2.2.1 were made available within days of each other, providing BSD enthusiasts with a very busy week of installing, testing and upgrading. We haven't seen any good reviews so far, but an interesting thread on Slashdot, prompted by a "Why NetBSD" question, gives a useful insight into the reasons for choosing to run the most portable operating system there is: "I believe NetBSD 5.0 is a major turn of tide. Compared to 4.0, this is definitely a new chapter. We here at $DAYJOB have made extensive evaluation of the NetBSD 5.0 pre-releases and it is looking very good indeed. Our internal benchmarks show that for our typical workload, performance of NetBSD is now comparable to that of Linux and FreeBSD. It is very likely that we will be rolling the next big-iron production line solely with NetBSD again." Disappointingly, NetBSD 5.0 still doesn't compare well with Linux when it comes to ease of use as a desktop operating system, but there is hope: "Admittedly, on the desktop, NetBSD is still more work than it should be. It's about the same as the other BSDs, and not so different from a basic Debian install, for example. There's a growing realization in the NetBSD community that 'making it easier' to get a functional modern desktop environment running is worthwhile."

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The next release of openSUSE is a long way away, but that hasn't stopped the community from wanting the latest and greatest. openSUSE 11.1 KDE Reloaded is a re-spun image of the current 11.1 release, complete with an updated KDE 4.2.2 and all other packages, fixes included. Community Manager Joe Brockmeirer writes: "This is an installable live CD that features the KDE 4.2.2 packages from the openSUSE Build Service repository. The live CD was created by Stephan Binner, and is useful for people who want to test out KDE 4.2 and users who are doing new installs and want the most recent openSUSE updates straight out of the box." Although not an official release, it does provide users with an easy way to install an up-to-date openSUSE system, thanks to their Online Build service. This announcement also served as a reminder for those tracking the unofficial KDE4 repositories that they must change to the newly created KDE:42 repo as the other will soon start receiving experimental builds of KDE 4.3.

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Across the globe last week, thousands of fans and users of Ubuntu celebrated the release of Jaunty Jackalope at over 100 release parties. Guy Thouret attended one such party in his home town in the United Kingdom and was amazed by what he found: "It wasn't just a room full of netbook wielding techies in Ubuntu T-shirts either, though there were many of those. There were a lot of, well, normal people. Ubuntu seems to have achieved what no other Linux distro has done before and has broken free of the tech community to be embraced by the masses." Due to Ubuntu's ability to handle the generally more complex issues of Linux distros, like installing proprietary drivers and codecs, it has been well received by technical and non-technical people alike. Thouret continues in his observations: "The important point to take from this is that Ubuntu has built up an increasing following and a 6-month release cycle is the key to stimulating ongoing interest. While the more tech savvy members of the community can get excited about the innovations every 6 months, everyone can get excited about each release just being new. Everybody knows that new is better, especially when you can all get together and celebrate with beer."

* * * * *

Users of one of the popular minimalist distribution, Arch Linux, have joined forces to create a monthly community magazine. Daniel Griffiths writes: "We recently started an independent project related to Arch Linux called "Arch User Magazine". It is a free magazine designed for the Arch Linux community. Although at this time we have no official affiliation with Arch Linux, we are supported by the community and developers." The magazine will concentrate on all things related to Arch Linux, with tips, tricks and news on what has been happening in their world. The first two issues of the magazine are available, with technical discussions on Arch's init scripts, how to harden SSH, and on using grep on the command line. With the release of issue one, Griffiths calls for help: "The lack of contributors at the moment means I have to do all the work myself and I'm only so creative. Hence, submit ideas, articles, whatever! Help us out so that Arch User Magazine can grow to its full potential!" Anyone interested in contributing should contact the project.

* * * * *

Barry Kauler has created one of the most popular distributions for low-end hardware, Puppy Linux. He gave up control of the project some six months ago to follow some other ideas he had and that's when Woof was born - a meta-distribution that lets users create a Puppy-like distro by pulling in packages from other distributions. Currently Woof supports Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, Arch Linux and Slackware Linux. Recently, however, there has been growing concern about the direction and leadership of Puppy Linux, now that Kauler is no longer involved. As a result, Kauler has asked the developers whether he should come back to once again take control and steer the project in the right direction. He has offered to return in a temporary capacity to kick off the new 5.0 releases and then hand over to a council to continue the work. He writes: "Perhaps I should coordinate the very first Puppy 5.0. After that, a 'council' or whatever can work on later versions of the 5.x series. That first 5.0 could be seen as a 'template' or 'reference build', and others would be welcome to add bells and whistles." He also mentions that he has been busy working away at various Puppy technologies such as the package manager, but is not interested in leading the project long term.

* * * * *

Although Sun Microsystems has been purchased by Oracle and many are wondering what the future of Sun's projects will be, it appears that Solaris 11 is on track for release in the middle of 2010. In an article on the subject, Timothy Morgan of The Register writes: "The number and gee-whizness of features Sun Microsystems is putting into updates to both the Solaris 10 commercial operating system and the related OpenSolaris development release of Solaris are slowing. That's the best indication that Nevada -- the code name for Solaris Next or Solaris 11 or whatever you want to call it -- is getting closer to release. Closer doesn't mean close, however. According to sources speaking to The Reg, Sun is quietly telling customers that Solaris 11 is targeted for launch sometime around the middle of 2010." The author continues: "Sun continues to kick out semi-annual updates to the current Solaris 10 commercial release, and today the 5/09 update appeared." Solaris is based on Sun's open source operating system, OpenSolaris, which is also scheduled for a new release next month.

* * * * *

The open source community is often divided as to whether the number of distributions, and the variety of choice that exists is a good thing or not. Linus Torvalds made his own opinion perfectly clear in an interview with DistroWatch earlier in the year: "I think multiple distributions aren't just a good thing, I think it's something absolutely required! We have hundreds of distros, and a lot of them are really for niche markets. And you need that - simply because different markets simply have different requirements, and no single distro will take care of them all." If you're still looking for that distro to get you started or one that better suits your needs, the experts at TuxRadar have an in-depth article to help you decide: "Choice is the best thing about Linux. Without choice, we may as well use an operating system where the developers make those choices for us," they write. "There is a flip side to all this choice, however, and that's finding the time to find the perfect distribution for you. You really need to try several before setting on the one you prefer, and downloading, installing and testing a Linux distribution takes a lot of time".

Mandriva Linux 2009.1 has been released: "Mandriva announces today the launch of the final version of Mandriva Linux 2009.1. Quicker, easier and even more secure, this new version brings you a host of innovative features. Main components: KDE 4.2.2, GNOME 2.26, X.Org Server 1.6, Linux kernel 2.6.29, Xfce 4.6. Mandriva Linux 2009.1 comes with a big improvement in boot time and the Mandriva Control Center tools have been also optimized. Network center is now supporting advanced network configuration, together with additional pre-configured Internet providers, integration with new network devices and support for different wireless regulatory domains. The Mandriva security framework, msec, has been also redesigned. The ext4 file system is now supported in stable version and available during installation." Read the release announcement, product overview and release notes for further details.

The NetBSD project has announced the release of NetBSD 5.0: "The NetBSD project is pleased to announce that NetBSD 5.0, the thirteenth release of the NetBSD operating system, is now available. NetBSD 5.0 features greatly improved performance and scalability on modern multiprocessor (SMP) and multi-core systems. In addition to scalability and performance improvements, a significant number of major features have been added. Some highlights are: a preview of metadata journaling for FFS file systems (known as WAPBL), the jemalloc memory allocator, X.Org instead of XFree86 on a number of ports, the Power Management Framework, ACPI suspend/resume support on many laptops, write support for UDF file systems...." See the release announcement and release notes for a full list of changes and new features.

Matthew Dillon has announced the release of DragonFly BSD 2.2.1, a BSD operating system originally forked from FreeBSD 4: "The new 2.2 release includes Hammer, a file system that includes instant crash recovery, multi-volume file systems, data integrity checking, fine grained history retention, and the ability to mirror data to other volumes. It has undergone extensive stress-testing and is considered production-ready!" Other changes include: "Fixes for libthread_xu: MAP_STACK and an errno leak; fixed an installworld failure due to kernel fixes and a libthread_xu issue; installer now works correctly in the console, and properly creates device files if they don't exist; updates for msdosfs, pax(1), and magic(3); allowed uid/gid/flags changes to fail if running cpdup as a user...." Read the full release notes for additional details.

Theo de Raadt has announced the release of OpenBSD 4.5: "We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.5. This is our 25th release on CD-ROM (and 26th via FTP). As in our previous releases, 4.5 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system: Initial ports to the xscale-based gumstix platform and the ARM-based OpenMoko; improved hardware support and several new or improved drivers for sensors; new tools - ypldap, an YP server using LDAP as a backend; malloc has gained new attack mitigation measures; install now allows multiple interfaces to be configured with DHCP; OpenSSH 5.2; over 5,500 ports, minor robustness improvements in package tools; major components - Xenocara (based on X.Org 7.4), GCC 2.95.3 and 3.3.5, Perl 5.10.0; our improved and secured version of Apache 1.3, with SSL/TLS...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a detailed list of all changes and improvements.

Jani Monoses has announced the release of Kiwi Linux 9.04, an Ubuntu-based distribution enhanced with some non-free components and optimised for Romanian and Hungarian users: "Kiwi Linux 9.04 is a desktop distribution based on Ubuntu 9.04 for the i386 architecture. Differences from Ubuntu 9.04: the supported languages on the CD are English, Hungarian and Romanian; GUI for pppoeconf and support for Speedtouch 330 USB ADSL modem firmware; a graphical tool for restoring GRUB boot menus lost after installing other operating systems; Evolution removed, no mail client at all on the CD; Flash plugin and GStreamer codecs for restricted audio and video formats; encrypted DVD playback via libdvdcss2; Compiz extra settings GUI; p7zip, unrar. The Medibuntu repositories are enabled by default to allow installing w32codecs, Skype and Google Earth, among others." Here are the brief release notes.

Ken Smith has announced the release of FreeBSD 7.2: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE. This is the third release from the 7-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: support for fully transparent use of superpages for application memory; support for multiple IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for jails; csup(1) now supports CVSMode to fetch a complete CVS repository; GNOME updated to 2.26, KDE updated to 4.2.2; sparc64 now supports UltraSparc-III processors. FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures." Read the release announcement and release notes for a detailed list of changes.

We are happy to announce that the recipient of the April 2009 DistroWatch.com donation is Python (or more precisely, Python Software Foundation), a powerful programming language, freely usable and distributable, even for commercial use. It receives US$300 in cash.

There can't be many open source enthusiasts who need an introduction to Python, but for those who aren't familiar with its main features, here is the list, as published on the project's about page: "Very clear, readable syntax; strong introspection capabilities; intuitive object orientation; natural expression of procedural code; full modularity, supporting hierarchical packages; exception-based error handling; very high level dynamic data types; extensive standard libraries and third party modules for virtually every task; extensions and modules easily written in C, C++ (or Java for Jython, or .NET languages for IronPython); embeddable within applications as a scripting interface."

Upon receiving the donation, Python Software Foundation sent a "thank you" email to DistroWatch: "Thank you very much for your cash contribution of $300.00 USD that the Python Software Foundation (PSF) received on 03-May-2009. We would like to express our appreciation for your willingness to support the PSF. Your contribution will be put to good use and help further the development, acceptance and awareness of the Python programming language in the IT world. Kurt B. Kaiser, Treasurer, Python Software Foundation."

As always, this monthly donations program is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. These vendors contributed US$50.00 each towards this month's donation to Python.

Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the program (figures in US dollars):

Since the launch of the Donations Program in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$20,733 to various open source software projects.

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New distributions added to database

CAINE. CAINE (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment) is an Ubuntu-based GNU/Linux live distribution created as a project of Digital Forensics for Interdepartmental Centre for Research on Security (CRIS), supported by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy. The CAINE forensic framework contains a collection of tools wrapped up into a user-friendly environment. It introduces novel features - it aims to fill the interoperability gap across different forensic tools, it provides a homogeneous GUI that guides digital investigators during the acquisition and analysis of electronic evidence, and it offers a semi-automatic process for the documentation and report compilation.

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